To Draw The Sword
by TrixTheFlowery
Summary: The Queen has been absent for months. She crept away in the hours following Walter's funeral and now lives a life of subtle obscurity, pursuing what she wants; her dreams. Of course this will never work out. No one gets away with jiliting the Head of Industry at the altar. Come bear witness to Albion's greatest ever game of Cat and Mouse.
1. Chapter 1

I.

She had disappeared shortly after Walter's funeral. She hadn't spoken a word to him that may have betrayed her whereabouts or reasoning for leaving, she simply vanished before the sun set on the day. Leaving no heir behind, it fell on Logan to rule again in his righteous sister's absence despite his status as a former tyrant. He accepted the burden with a heavy heart; Esther was the bright and shining beacon for the people that he simply didn't have the charisma within to be. He wasted no time in sending out special squads to find her. In the mean time, he dutifully saw to the running of his sister's realm, leaving every policy she enacted as it was to the very letter: He just wanted his sister back, and he wanted her to come back to things the way she left them... if she ever did.

The tarnished king sits on a gleaming throne, brought up from years of muck and disparity by the one he thought would be there forever. He sends Jasper to fetch a bottle of port and his favourite brand of cigar; there will be no sleep for the weary king tonight.

II.

She has seen the true hero of Albion, though the fledgling that great king Sparrow birthed tried in earnest to escape the sight of she and everyone else. Theresa knew it was the death of her dear friend and mentor that had pushed the Queen over the edge, as she watched in silence, in a space that was not shared by the cold northern woods that Esther was currently hiding in. She saw no reason to reach out to Esther. No reason to interfere; this was a battle that was fought inside the mind, and the young Queen would have to choose for herself what her next decision would be. She felt her lips lift at the corners as she watched the woman, wrapped in the furs of The Dwellers, huddled beneath an ancient pine. A shiver shook her body. Curious that she had been in the same place for days now, Theresa mused. But then again... when you are a seer of things, the curious is far more easily understood than it is to most.

Stupid woman.

III.

He had appearances to keep, sure. But the one thing that Ben Finn was never any good at, was pretending to give a hobbe's ass about anything he didn't actually give a hobbe's ass about. This, however, was easy for him; he would gladly take this over the public eye and fancy-to-do's and ballrooms and tiny crackers with fish eggs on, and sparkly wine that didn't get you drunk nearly as quickly nor as efficiently as a good bottle of whiskey would. He smiled to himself as he crammed an extra shirt into his rucksack; it was a rush, what he was doing. This would be the third time he had seen her since she had disappeared. It was daring. It was brazen. It was irresponsible.

He couldn't help but chuckle into the silence of the small Bowerstone Industrial apartment as he continued to stuff essentials into the rucksack. If anything, it certainly was love.

Thirty paces north east off of the beaten track, bear west at the tree that looks like a troll, seventy five more paces north, cross a narrow stream and turn right at the group of four boulders... under the ancient pine tree: The charlatan captain knew he would find his true love under the boughs.

IV.

Heartbreak was not a word that a man like Reaver acknowledged in his well-rounded vocabulary. More accurate descriptors of the varying levels of fury he felt included words such as spiteful, vehement, tempestuous.. in short Queen Esther had found herself in a danger zone. It was surely no coincidence that she vanished from right under his nose after the funeral of that louse-ridden oaf, hours before the day of their marriage. The marriage they had in fact contractually agreed upon before she took the throne; they would be wed, and he would be king consort in Albion, thus being entitled to her many... assets, both material and otherwise.

He ground his perfectly white teeth as he sat behind his desk.

"Well?" He hissed over the rim of his brandy glass, "Report, or whatever it is you do."

The well paid mercenary fiddled with his filthy hat in his equally filthy hands. "We thinks we found her, Mistah Reaver. Up in the mountains of Mistpeak, she is. Ain't moved from the same place in days."

"Return her to me." He said quietly. "Mistpeak is frightfully cold this time of year. I would be loathe to hear that my dear fiancee caught a sniffle." He glared at the mercenary as silence fell. "What else do you need?" He said, and it took no genius to detect the threat that lurked beneath the question. The mercenary turned heel and rushed from the room, jamming his rumpled hat on his head as he went.

The duplicitous suitor reclined back in his luxurious leather desk chair and swirled the brandy in his glass. If Reaver had ever learned anything in his very long life, it was that contracts were very much a thing to be taken seriously. People often-times got hurt when they weren't. Tut tut.


	2. Chapter 2

She shifted lazily under her blanket of furs, groggily becoming aware of the thin rays of daylight filtering in through the boughs of her shelter. Eyelids lifted open, and she spent a few moments in silence, watching specks of dust float in and out of the bands of light that were hitting her face. She reached out a gloved hand from her warm cocoon and swiped at the flecks, watching as the current stirred them in new ways. Clouds of her breath, visible in the cold morning sun mingled with the light and she knew it was time to get up.

She sat up, resting her hands on the ground beneath her, feeling the pine needles and cold soil between her fingers. The irony of the situation was not lost on her; if things had gone the way they were meant to, she would have felt a feather bed and silk sheets rather than hard, cold earth. She would have had a warm body sleeping next to her, and a hot breakfast awaiting her.

The only thing that awaited her was the long bow leaning against the stump of the tree she had taken shelter under. Breakfast was not served to the Queen of Albion anymore.

Birds sang their songs and the trickle of a not so distant stream mingled with the slow dripping pitter-patter of melting snow leaving the outstretched and frozen limbs of the forest around her. She set about rolling up her furs, and preparing herself to hunt down breakfast. She gave the string of her bow a quick once-over, and thumbed the point of one of the iron tipped arrow heads she had bartered from the Dwellers of Mistpeak, checking its sharpness.

In the age of industry, a long bow was a seemingly archaic and inefficient choice for a weapon to be sure. But having abandoned her throne and breaking her word to Reaver, current circumstances called for discretion, and galumphing through the forest with a rifle would certainly draw unwanted attention.

Upon her arrival to Mistpeak, she, with little thought, handed over all of her finery; jewels she had worn to Walter's funeral, the rich satin mourning clothes she had worn, a large satchel of gold, and the engagement ring that Reaver had given to her that bore a diamond nearly the size of an infant's fist. She had no need for any of it anymore. She'd sooner throw it all in the river, but she knew that Sabine's people would put the riches to good use. The only things she elected to keep were her ornately wrought pistol and sword. All she asked for in exchange was some travelling clothes, some furs, some salted meat, the bow, and Sabine's oath that he would never speak of her again.

With his solemn promise in her ears, and an undeniable sensation of terror that she was actually doing this, she set off, further north to the uninhabited frozen wastes of the mountains; practically unknown to mankind, this was the safest place she could think of. The few who dared to brave this place were only the bravest of hunters, and not even then did they always return to their homes. The weather was fickle and changed almost hourly. Sometimes it was bone-chillingly cold, the wind like a razor and the snow sharp and stinging. Other times, like now, it was quiet and serene. When the sun dared to come out on days like today, slight melting would occur. Cheering as it was, she knew that when the melt froze into ice and became coated with a thin dusting of snow, it would become very easy to break a leg or tumble down an incline of jagged stones if one wasn't paying attention.

Wolves howled at night, more than once she had to fight off an ice bear that got curious and poked its snout into her shelter. Sometimes she heard the growls and huffs and groans of something she could not identify.

She also knew she was being followed.

Certainly, the entire castle would have been in an uproar following her disappearance. Ruling the kingdom would have fallen to Logan once more, and she expected he was putting every effort into finding her, although from what she could tell, the men tracking her were not royal guard. No, she suspected it would be awhile yet until they thought to come this far north. The men who tracked her were rough, filthy, tattered sorts: Mercenaries. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who had hired them.

Her jilted groom had surely not reacted well to news of her vanishing into thin air. It was difficult to keep a smile from her face at the thought of ageless Reaver finally being denied something.

There was no love in their agreement to marry, no affection or desire to be bound together in blissful, loving matrimony till the end of their (her) days. It was a marriage arranged purely out of political necessity; having borrowed a great deal of money from the industrialist in the days leading up to the war against The Crawler, and having it impressed upon her the importance of the bloodline of heroes to carry on, they both grudgingly agreed to marry. On paper it looked nice. Romantic even. The upper class women had their share of gossip and fawning over the immortal deviant finally settling down with the brisk hero who had finally captured his heart.

Such nonsense was brushed off effortlessly by both parties; Queen Esther knew that Reaver's duty as a husband would go only as far as putting children in her womb, and standing on ceremony. She did not labour under a flawed delusion that he would be loyal to her only, or that he would be anything else short of what he actually was; a baggage-ridden, murderous scoundrel. He would have heirs, he would have riches, he would have a castle, and the title of "King Consort." He couldn't possibly lose by agreeing to this as one day, Esther would inevitably die of age, and he would still be the handsome, youthful man he had been for centuries. Being a pirate king was not enough to quell Reaver's ambition. If it was within his grasp, how could he pass up the chance to be king of all the land indefinitely?

They had been set to marry the evening following Walter's funeral, and the icy cold dread in her stomach was certainly a contributing factor to her flight. The idea of living the rest of her life with someone who was counting down the minutes until she died was nauseating. It felt like walking into the jaws of an enormous beast, for she didn't doubt for a moment, that if she had followed through with her marriage, that she would be dead long before old age came knocking on her door.

Recklessly, she let the mercenaries catch fleeting glimpses of her as she moved from place to place over the weeks. She never engaged any of them, or gave any indication she was aware of their presence. She simply fed them the occasional sight of her, be it the light of a fire, or a quick snatch of her passing through the trees.

It would have been too easy to kill them all and have Reaver waiting endlessly behind his splendorous solid oak desk, grinding his teeth into dust out of furor. She knew they would report back to him that she had been seen. She knew that once that happened they would come to try and capture her. That's when she would send them back to Reaver, piece by piece until he got off his entitled ass and dared to brave the mountains and fetch her himself. She hadn't risked her life hundreds of times, lost friends, fought a bloody war with pure darkness, and thrown away dream after dream to go without a fight into the arms of her fiancee, like a subdued woman.

She wasn't sure if she'd ever go back. Oddly, she found she had everything she wanted right here.

She pulled her pocket watch out from the folds of her jacket. Its golden hands told her it was nearly ten in the morning. Ten in the morning had been the time they had agreed on, right?

She pulled aside the branches of her pine-tree shelter and squinted in the bright morning light reflected off of the gleaming snow. She glanced around a few times before pulling an old, worn piece of elk antler from the furs around her neck. She placed it to her lips and blew, and the cry of a falcon echoed around the hills behind her.

Silence fell and she waited, between the sounds of melting snow and running water, for the sound she had been waiting over a week to hear again; the call of an eagle sounded off in the forest and a smile lit her face: Ben was close.


	3. Chapter 3

Esther reached out and softly trailed a finger down the satin bodice of the black gown, its sleek feel occasionally interrupted by golden sequins and small red gems that the fire glinted off of in a warm, orange way. She rubbed the black lace of the mourning veil that would cover her face tomorrow between her thumb and forefinger, taking a sip of absinthe as she did so, her eyes falling of their own accord to the other gown that took up space in her royal chambers, set upon a mannequin to the right.

A disgusted hiss left her lips and she quickly turned from both gowns to face the fire, allowing herself the chance to revel in her grief privately, and in near silence. The only sounds were the drops of rain hitting the many panes of glass surrounding her, and the crackling of burning wood.

Grief felt good right now. It was a bittersweet feeling to be entirely alone and able to properly feel the emotions she felt at the loss of Walter. She briefly wondered if Ben had chosen to stay in the castle tonight. Only for a moment did she entertain the notion of going to find out.

She could go.

Just to see.

Just to say hello.

Just to spend another night with him before she was married off to the deviant.

As if she wouldn't spend many more nights with him despite all that business...

"Oh my, a brooding bride. I can't help but wonder what I've gotten myself into."

She couldn't see his face, but she didn't need visual confirmation to pick up on the smugness his voice carried: Reaver wasn't excited to marry her. He was excited to be able to say he owned a castle.

Thankful he couldn't see her face, she stared at the fire, absinthe glass held in two slightly shaking hands, lest she lose her grip in more ways than one and shatter the fine crystal. The milky green fluid sloshed in the glass, and she forced herself to relax her tense muscles, though she wanted nothing more than to order Reaver away.

Instead, she forced a delicate, womanly smile and turned to face her fiancee. "My dearest love," she said in a light tone, "Tomorrow is the day my darling friend is given back to the earth. Is it entirely out of the question for one to spend some time alone to consider one's own... mortality?" She spoke with grace, sincerity and all of the bearing of a queen, although she had chosen her words carefully, fully aware of the subtly placed barb that Reaver would be certain not to miss.

She knew he made note of it, but he made no show of it. "A load of tosh, my dear lady." He said, waving his cigar dismissively through the air, a halo of smoke collecting around his head. "It does one no good to dwell on those who have already embarked on their sole journey upon leaving the land of the living; by which I mean, rotting into fluid in the ground. Honestly, darling, how macabre can you get?" He sauntered over to the white wedding gown Esther had previously been trying to ignore. "Let us instead look towards the new and exciting opportunities that have presented themselves to us, shall we?"

The gown was offensive, standing there in the corner, gleaming white at a time when she felt mired up to her eyes in darkness; an obnoxious bit of finery that to her represented nothing but a cheap lie. Her own bitterness shocked her as Reaver's eyes swept over the bridal clothing.

"You will look ravishing in this." He whispered.

A throaty laugh escaped the queen as she lit from her place from the fire and crossed the maroon carpet, skirts swirling around her ankles. She drained the remaining absinthe in her glass and set the empty vessel on the table, measuring out a new portion of the drink, busying her hands with the ritual of properly preparing absinthe.

"You doubt me?" He continued in his hushed tone, eyes gleaming in the firelight.

"I don't." She admitted, truthfully unafraid of the activities that would occur on their wedding night; a shameful prude Esther was not. "I'm nervous." She said sullenly.

"My dear..." He said, sweeping behind her and plucking the freshly poured absinthe from her pale fingers. "The secret of remaining young is to never have an emotion that is unbecoming."

She certainly didn't want to marry him; her very life was at stake in doing so. But the pair did have a certain history, a sort of understanding, a strange and skewed friendship and now that he was standing behind her with his hands resting on her gray-clad hips, she began to wonder if perhaps it wouldn't be that bad. She didn't hate Reaver; she pitied him, and what is love if it is forced?

"Unbecoming?" She repeated, making no move to remove his hands, despite Ben's face running through her mind, for pleasure was a fleeting thing and one may as well enjoy it while they can. "How in the name of Avo are you standing here, calm as a sea breeze? I don't want to marry. Not you, not anyone. I just finished saving a country. I don't want to spend the rest of my days fat with child, boring and bossy."

"C'est la vie, dear woman." Reaver sighed, drinking from her glass and handing it back to her. "But the people want for romance. They crave it. Their own silly little lives are not enough, they must be able to look from the outside, inwards on something they can fantasize and dream about 'ohhhh how sickeningly sweet, mayhaps one day that'll be me,'" He stroked her hip with his thumb. "Of course that's all it is... dreaming. We must give the people what they want."

How she wanted to trust him. How she wanted to take comfort in his words and feel peace quell the turmoil within her, but Reaver was an actor, and an actor who had many years to perfect his craft. Everything he said was to be taken at the most, at face value for there was still a chilling warning in her subconscious to be very careful around this man.

"I think you're missing the true perils of our situation." Reaver mused, playing with her hair. "The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish... unselfish people are colourless, and lack individuality." He made a mock shudder. "Rest assured, my Queen, although I have done well for myself in obtaining betrothal to royalty so strikingly dark and beautiful as yourself, my dearest wish is that our most core selfish qualities and ruthless individualities remain un-tainted by the golden bands fastened to our fingers."

She knew had said it in a flippant attempt to make her feel better about everything, but it did nothing more than impress that she was marrying for all the wrong reasons. Marrying to repay a debt, marrying to make more heroes, marrying to... entertain her subjects?

Her stomach lurched unpleasantly and she pulled away from Reaver's grasp. The absinthe was making her head spin and making her thoughts blurry. Mostly she felt angry and trapped. In all truth, Reaver was being splendid about the entire thing to her face, but that's because it was purely to his advantage to do so: He was gaining more than he was losing, whereas she was losing everything she cared about. Her entire future was being handed off to someone else. The only reality that gave her solace was that should anything happen to her, Logan would once again be put on the throne... royal succession and all.

She pulled her gold pocket-watch from her pocket and glanced at the time. "It's late." She said. "I should be going to bed soon."

Reaver's smirk told her he saw through the lie, but rather than call her on it he simply swept her hand into his own, keeping his eyes locked on hers as he gently pressed his lips to her knuckles. "In that case, fais de beus reves, dahling."

Despite the kind wishes, she felt more threatened than ever by the murder in his eyes.


End file.
